Jeanette Bartlett only remembers brief flashes of her big sister, 17-year-old Patty Bartlett. “She was a photographer. She was taking up photography in high school, and she was very good,” Jeanette told Dateline. “I just remember her taking me out and taking pictures of me as a kid.”
Jeanette says Patty found her love of photography while taking a photo science class at Pennsbury High School in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania. “She just really took to it,” Jeanette said, adding that Patty had received a scholarship to continue studying photography after high school. “She never got to go.”
Patty was the second of four siblings in the Bartlett family. Dateline spoke with older brother, Jeff, who said that in 1975, Patty was a senior in high school, and was always surrounded by friends. “I have good memories with my sister,” he said.
Jeanette is the youngest of the Bartlett family.
“She’s incredibly beautiful. She had long dark hair, and she was thin, and just had this smile,” Jeanette said. “And everybody, apparently, like, just adored her.”
Jeanette was only 5 years old when tragedy struck.
That was 50 years ago.
On January 13, 1975, Patty Bartlett was murdered in the parking lot of the Oxford Valley Mall in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She had gone to the mall in Middletown Township that night to pick up some items at a camera shop. “It was going to snow -- there was snow in the forecast -- so she went and ran to the mall to grab items so she could take pictures,” Jeanette recalled.
After purchasing her items, Patty walked back to the parking lot. According to Jeff, it was dusk. “She was attacked,” Jeanette said.
Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn told Dateline the Oxford Valley Mall was a very popular mall in a safe community. But what happened that night in the parking lot was absolutely horrific. “Patti was stabbed multiple times,” Schorn said. There were no witnesses to the crime and no weapon was recovered at the scene. “Without the murder weapon and without the eyewitness -- any eyewitnesses -- seeing a fleeing, you know, suspected perpetrator, there are inherent challenges right from the start.”
“I’ve actually walked through the mall, walked where she went,” Jeff said. “I still can’t believe nobody saw anything.”
Patty did try to get help. “She tried to make her way into the -- the entry of the mall,” Schorn said. It was at that point that someone saw Patty and called for help. “It was 5:30 p.m. when the Middletown Township Police were dispatched,” the DA said.
Patty’s sister Jeanette said Patty fought for her life. “For 50 minutes, she fought,” she said. “She just lost too much blood.”
There was no communication from Patty if she knew or could describe her attacker before she died. “In fairness, I don’t think it was asked, but it -- it was certainly not communicated,” Schorn said. “One of the detectives expressed regret in that, you know, the emergency medical personnel were, you know, rendering aid and trying to treat Patty,” so they did not question her.
Jeff was at his girlfriend’s house with her family that night when the phone rang. An officer was on the line to deliver the terrible news to his girlfriend’s father that his daughter — Jeff’s girlfriend -- had been murdered. “He said right to the police officer on the phone, ‘That’s impossible, she’s here right in front of me,’” Jeff said. Some kind of mix-up it seemed.
Eventually, another call came. It was Jeff’s father. “I said, ‘Dad, what’s wrong?’” Jeff remembered. “And he says, ‘Jeff, please come home.’” Jeff went home. “I got home, and all the cops were in the driveway,” he said. “The whole thing was shocking. I mean, it was the worst day of my life.”
It soon became clear what had happened back at Jeff’s girlfriend’s house. “Evidently, Patty had my girlfriend’s license,” he said. Jeanette explained why Patty might have had Jeff’s girlfriend’s ID. “Back in the day,” she said, “right across the bridge, you could drink at 18.”
Jeanette doesn’t remember much after Patty’s murder. “I was young. I just remember lights and the sirens that evening,” she said.
“Everybody was panicked. I felt something was happening and --. It’s so bizarre. I remember watching ‘I Love Lucy’ and sitting on the couch. And I went to, like, the cellar door where she used to talk on the phone, and started to cry -- before anybody even really knew -- feeling like something’s wrong. I knew something was wrong.”
What Jeff remembers most in the days that followed is the funeral. “Thousands came to the viewing for Patty,” Jeff said. “It was unbelievable how many people showed up.”
Dealing with Patty’s murder was extremely traumatic for the family. “We all went through hell in different ways because we were all different ages,” Jeanette said. “I had a tough time going through school.” She also struggled with nightmares and trauma in the years that followed. “My parents were rocks,” she said. “I don’t know how they did it, but they did.” Big brother Jeff agrees. “My mom and dad took good care of us,” he said.
And as the Bartlett family attempted to pick up the pieces, the Middletown Township Police Department and the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office worked to solve the case.
“The scene was processed,” DA Schorn told Dateline. “In speaking to the detectives that are presently handling the case that — I mean, they praised the work that was done by Middletown Township and, you know, the officers and detectives assigned at the time.”
Schorn says authorities do not believe Patty was killed in a botched robbery. “Her wallet and purse were untouched,” she said. “This is not a robbery. That was not the motive.”
The DA said the officers assigned to the initial investigation did the best they could. “I mean, they did a thorough job,” she said. “This is, like, a remarkably challenging type of investigation given the circumstances and given the limitations in the ‘70s.”
Jeff has talked with different detectives assigned to the case over the years. “They’ve done everything they could,” he said. “They just said it was just a dead-end.”
“I wish I was there with her to protect her,” Jeff lamented.
Patty had a frightening experience shortly before her death. “She worked at this place called Coco’s, not far from our house, and somebody followed her home,” Jeanette said. “That happened, like, a week before the murder.”
“I know that she was scared,” Jeanette added. The DA’s office told Dateline they looked into it, but there wasn’t much they could do. They also told Dateline that one of Patty’s coworkers from the restaurant had seen her with an unknown male just a few days before the murder. They had a sketch made, but ultimately were never able to identify the person Patty had been seen with.
DA Schorn says the Middletown Township Police Department and county detectives have developed some persons of interest and theories of the crime over the past five decades. She would not go into specifics or discuss the evidence that was collected at the time, but emphasizes detectives are dedicated to analyzing what they have. “The highly-skilled detectives who know the resources available in the forensic science world have scrutinized the evidence and will continue to scrutinize the evidence as there are developments with regards to DNA,” she said. “Sadly, in many cases, we find it’s very unlikely that a piece of forensic evidence ends up being what is the successful key to solving the case.”
And while time can sometimes be a detective’s enemy, the DA says, “In some cases, time has become our friend.” She’s hoping that in Patty’s case — it will. The key, she believes, is continuing to keep a case like Patty’s in the public eye. “Sometimes that’s what it takes to have someone, you know, realize: ‘The time is now, I need to come forward,’” she said. “I mean, someone knows something. Someone does.”
Schorn hopes that person finds the strength to come forward — so they can provide some measure of closure to Patty’s family. “No bit of information is too small or -- if you think you know something, don’t think, ‘Oh, it’s probably not relevant,’” she said. “Let the detectives sort through the information.”
Given the age of the case, Jeanette Bartlett knows the person who murdered her sister may never face justice.
“A lot of these people are already passed away. But it doesn’t matter to me,” she said. “I want to know who. I want to know why.”
Jeff Bartlett agrees with his sister, but takes comfort in one thing: “The good Lord will take care of the guy that did that to her.”
Anyone with information about the murder of Patty Bartlett is urged to contact Bucks County Detectives at 215-348-6354 or the Middletown Township Police Department at 215-750-3870.
Tips can also be left through CrimeWatch at www.bucksda.org or with the Middletown Township Police Department at www.mtpd.org on the anonymous tips link or on the anonymous tip phone line at 215-750-3888.
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